Back in October 2009, the H1N1 killed 1,000 people in the United States, including almost 100 children before President Obama later declared national emergency for the virus. At the time, the media hysteria was not as high as it is today.

Separately, the video is a great marketing piece for why everyone should buy a DJI Osmo.

The elephants in the room are the number of people who are going to die because they run out of money, and the social unrest that is going to materialize within about a month of lockdowns and closures. 50% of the households in the United States don’t have $1,000 to spend on an emergency. Ohio just closed all its restaurants and bars, and other states are going to follow suit. The follow-on effects to the main street economy are going to be totally unmanageable for many, many people in the coming months. Then we’re going to close the schools, perhaps for the entire duration of the calendar year.

What are people going to do in the July heat when they have no money, no jobs to go to, and their kids to feed? I’ll tell you what they’re going to do: they’re going to go crazy.

The bank runs are already starting. If the banking system starts rationing currency, we’re in pandemonium. We haven’t even begun to see the catastrophic effects this is going to have on the banking system as everything starts to go under, people start to default on car payments, rent, student loans, credit card bills, utility bills, and everything else they won’t be able to afford. Including gasoline to get to whatever stores are open to buy food they cannot purchase.

Let’s also remember that more desperate/idle/displaced people is going to mean more crime. Bill de Blasio didn’t want to say it, but the reason he really close the schools in New York is that setting about 1 million teenagers loose on the streets in the next couple of months is going to be mayhem. The police departments might be able to handle a two-week period like a hurricane or natural disaster, but stretch the crime wave out to six months and amplify it, particularly with reduced manpower that will result from LE officers getting infected, and they’re going to have to do what is on the table in Britain: ignore property crimes.

That means every bad guy who likes your car is gonna be in your driveway, while you try to talk to the cops via the internet.

All the “blunt the peak” and social distancing theory is nice, but what it really means is that the epidemic is going to last months longer. Anyone who has ever run a business knows that you can’t just shut down for two months and then pop back into action. And in large cities and small, we’re going to have real public order and crime problems. Cuomo is talking about enlisting the military through the Army Corps of Engineers to create a parallel health system for the sick. Fine and dandy, but he should also be talking about how he’s going to need a few thousand troops armed with automatic weapons to patrol the streets to stop New York City from looking like the blackout of 1977 every night for a couple months straight.

Ah, come on. A bad guy getting interested in a car in somebody’s driveway during thr crisis time will likely end up full of holes. Even here in the ultraliberal SF Bay peninsula every neighbor on my street has a gun. Or, usually, more.

In Massachusetts, Governor Charlie Baker just closed all the schools for three weeks. Restaurants cannot serve food or drink on the premises. The three casinos in Massachusetts all closed at 6 a.m. Sunday. And gatherings larger than 25 people are forbidden. So there goes the Spring for all the restaurants and businesses hoping to emerge from the winter.

Next up is confiscation of firearms from lawful owners. I think you’re going to see it in New York and California first, possibly Illinois, and then several other states immediately, including Massachusetts, as a public health measure. They will make the attempt to justify it that way, Second Amendment be damned, take us to court and wait 10 years.

I’m also predicting this spring and summer are going to be a wild ride geopolitically. The Russians and their good friends are going to wait until the moment of maximum stress and freakout, and then we’re going to have a military crisis. They’re going to try to stretch us out and break us. It began with the oil price shock, and the mayhem is going to continue. I have the feeling we’re going to learn exactly what it means to rely on China for so many of our supply chains, at the moment we need them the most. I think we’re already in World War III.

>> They’re going to try to stretch us out and break us. It began with the oil price shock… It’s interesting to see how the meaning of “oil price shock” has changed from “price spike” to its polar opposite.

Indeed it is. Perfectly timed, too, to whack the U.S. petroleum industry just as the rest of the financial world was staring into the abyss. Trump tried to put a silver lining on it and arrest the plunge by filling the SPR, but I doubt that’s going to be enough.

U.S. stock futures are already limit down at 8:30 p.m. Sunday night despite the Fed’s massive QE efforts today. It’s almost as though no amount of money in the world can stop it. Next week is going to be a bad week.

“In 2019, U.S. net imports (imports minus exports) of petroleum from foreign countries averaged about 0.53 million barrels per day, equal to about 2.7% of average daily U.S. petroleum consumption. This was the lowest percentage since 1949, the first year for which the U.S. Energy Information Administration has historical data.”

Demand will easily slide >3% based on what’s currently going on. We’ll be totally fine for oil.

…and de Blasio reverses as the Teachers Union twists his arms and closes the schools in New York. Within 24 hours NYC has to have a plan for food and child care. And the City is setting up special locations to entertain the kids of “essential workers.” The State is Taking Over.

Alex: I fully agree with you that “…no amount of money in the world can stop it”. And why would it? As the economy unravels (and the civility thins out), would you eat futures or wash your hands with liquid instruments? Finance is an abstraction in the world that has known computers.

I totally agree with Larry Summers’ sentiment: “Interest rates don’t cure the coronavirus and don’t repair supply chains.” In fact, I’ve never understood the world’s central banks obsession with key rates: the policy worked a few times in the past but it is not universally applicable. I must be deplorable, sigh…

@GermanL: As you can recall, the US is a net oil exporter, so “they” likely means US fracker companies and not the Middle East sheikhs. I think “they” will be content with our worthless dollars, even though I am sure they’d prefer hand sanitizer and toilet paper.

There will be no stagflation for now as European banks are going suck in cheap USD like an inverted hurricane, while the consumer prices will be frozen by authorities. Hence, no inflation: just consumer goods shortage and a potential for toilet paper to become a local currency in the brave new barter economy. Stagnation/recession is certainly in the cards.

That’s just for now: we’ll see what happens when the epidemic starts declining. JMHO.